[h2][color=00a651]Neil Maxwell[/color]

With Alex Mercede

Monday, late night[/h2]

It wasn’t long after Neil had hung up with the director that Mercede returned with dinner. Neil was still pacing the room trying to decide how to approach this whole situation. Chris had gotten a pretty good triangulation on Pixie and she had said that if they got the car to feel free to show up.

[color=00a651]“Hey Mercede.”[/color] Neil said, in his not so well executed attempt to seem like a normal human for once. [color=00a651]“So I got a hold of Pixie, and she’s a bit of a strange one. Honestly she kind of weirds me out. Anyway she basically told me that if we don’t get her a ‘69 Impala then she’d join Shadow. I don’t think she realizes how stupid that would be, but I called the director, and she’s going to try to pull strings and get the car out here tomorrow afternoon. Not sure how. Those cars are impossible to find.”[/color] This whole situation was insane. Surely there had to be someone better qualified than Neil who could do this job. He was not a face.

Mercede blinked a couple of times as he stood just inside the closed door of the hotel. Then he nodded once, continued to walk toward the small table, and set down a couple of take-out boxes. [color=f26522]“You want the tacos or the burrito? I’m not picky, and this place is supposed to be pretty damn good,”[/color] he said, seeming exceptionally nonchalant about the whole thing.

[color=00a651]“Tacos, thanks.”[/color] Neil stepped over to the boxes of food and pulled out a few of the tacos. [color=00a651]“So yeah this Pixie chick, she’s crazy good at games, that could be in part her technopath power, but I think that just added to her already amazing skill. She had definitely had contact with Shadow. Her passcode for voice chat today was Shadowsux.[/color] Neil took a few bites of his taco. He thought over the conversation with Pixie, she seemed like she just didn’t care what happened to herself. Neil sighed. [color=00a651]“I’ll be honest I have no idea what I’m doing. I hope if we do talk to her tomorrow face to face you can handle her better than I did.”[/color]

[color=f26522]“Okay. That’s all well and good, but stop talking about her for a bit and eat.”[/color] Mercede said as he bit into the burrito from the other box. [color=f26522]“First lesson about field missions; stress is your worst enemy. When you get stressed about something, you overthink it. When you overthink something, you miss things that would normally be obvious.”[/color]  

[color=f26522]“Case in point- I don’t think she’s likely to make good on her threat to join up with Shadow. We haven’t tried to get a hold of her until today, yet she still had that much secrecy and security about her. That, plus the passcode, suggests to me that she’s had it up to here,”[/color] he waved his hand toward his eyebrow, [color=f26522]“With them trying to find her. Which takes that concern off to the side, even if not entirely off the table. Now, I’m going to sit here and eat this amazing burrito. It will probably take me between fifteen and twenty-five minutes. I don’t want to hear another word about her until I am done.”[/color] He looked Neil in the eye, which if Neil was honest with himself was intimidating as hell. [color=f26522]“And since I know it’s going to be on your mind, what I want you to do instead is go back over your contact with her. Try to recall everything you can, even tiny things if possible. And once I’ve got this delicious compendium of rice, chicken, and salsa safe in my belly, we’ll go over it together. Sound good?”[/color] Neil just nodded. There wasn’t much to say in response to that, except the blessed silence of eating.